Netanyahu Denies Snubbing P.A. Chairman Mahmoud Abbas
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JERUSALEM, Israel – Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas summoned the Israeli press to his headquarters in Ramallah Thursday evening to deny charges by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he refuses to meet with him.
Abbas told reporters he'd been snubbed by the prime minister's office recently – a charge Netanyahu's office denied.
Speaking in a public interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Netanyahu said talks were up to Abbas.
"We haven't been walking away from negotiations. Unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership for the past seven years has deigned to meet with me for six hours in the first year and since, nada," he said.
"But they say you create facts on the ground by building these settlements that make it highly unlikely that there will ever be a Palestinian state," Zakaria retorted.
"Well they say that, but in fact that is not the case because the settlements take up a very small amount of land and in any case it's something to be negotiated," he responded. "Let's negotiate."
For years, Netanyahu has said that if the conflict were resolved, Israel would have peace with neighboring Arab states. Now he hopes that warming relations with the Arab world could actually help solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
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